His words stunned me until I was reminded of the way he’d rolled on his back in his kitty form and pouted when he realized that we’d neglected to build our first nest where the sunbeams would hit it. Needless to say, we’d disassembled it, and Briarhad rearranged the whole room so we could have our nest in the sunniest spot possible.
“I did, didn’t I?” I remarked as his words sunk in, pride and a connection with my mates and our offspring flooding me with a sense of belonging.
I’d worried at first about not being fully accepted in my new community or by my new in-laws, but I’d rapidly discovered that my fears were unfounded. The longtime patrons of the Cookie Shop had fussed and fawned all over me and brought Briar all kinds of teas and suggestions for combating morning sickness. Maverick’s mom had jumped at the chance to have me take over the photos, videos, website listings, and photo brochures after she’d seen my photography portfolio. Not only that, but she’d purchased a variety of landscape and wildlife photos for her office as well as to use while staging houses.
Having my work seen had already started to create a buzz about it, and purchases from my webpage had gone up in number and frequency. She had her eyes open for a storefront for my gallery, and in the meantime, Briar had added a ton of my photos to the wall of the Cookie Shop. The community, while predominantly shifter, had its fair share of humans too, and it was a very family-oriented place to live. Social activities were abundant for all ages. One interest Maverick and I had developed was the manga book club we’d attended once a week for the past four months. We weren’t the only expectant parents in the group either. Even better was seeing several infants and toddlers accompanying their parents, as well as the designated play space that had been created for them.
From parks with splash pads to sock hops at the bingo hall, there was literally something to enjoy in every phase of life. From a thriving MMA gym that my pops had already been in contact with to the fire safety academy that specialized in teaching firefighters how to deal with certainintricate environments they might encounter inside of a shifter's home, such as rooms with wooden branches filling them, allowing avian shifters to perch comfortably, to earthen caverns and tunnels running beneath homes where frightened family members might accidentally wind up trapped and buried if the structure collapsed. All were things my dad had encountered many times. The town had plenty of spaces where we all just fit and plenty of room to keep on growing into the individuals we were meant to be.
A series of bloops and blips from Maverick’s side of the nest caught my attention, and I glanced over to see Maverick grinning as he continued to text back and forth with someone.
“Now what are you up to?” I asked.
“Getting us more blankets,” he remarked. “I explained the situation to Briar, and he’s going to grab as many as he can. I stressed soft, fluffy, wide, and thick, but put the emphasis on fluffy and thick. I did remind him to make sure he felt both sides. He sent a sad face emoji and a tea emoji and asked if we were ever going to let him live down the whole fake fur fiasco. I promised he would never hear about that miserably coarse monstrosity again if he delivered us a bounty of blankets tonight.”
He'd no sooner finished the words than he burst out laughing.
Chuckling, I inched over until I could lie beside him and see the response our mate had sent.
Bet.Dust emoji. Smoke emoji. Dust emoji.
I guess the race was on. I couldn’t wait to feel what he brought us and get the final pieces of the nest in place because my lower back had been aching all morning, and I was starting to feel like the doctor’s declaration that our twins would be born soon was true, since twins never went the full nine months. This was going to be another one of those soon-soon instances. WhileI couldn’t say with a hundred percent certainty that what I was feeling was labor, it certainly felt like what theWhat to Expect When You're Expectingbook described. I’d read the damned thing cover to cover three times since we’d been told that we were expecting. If it continued, I’d speak up. Right now, I was still swimming in uncertainty and a steadfast determination not to be one of those expectant parents who rushed to the hospital six times only to be sent home and told they were only Braxton-Hicks contractions and not the real thing.
“I can’t believe we waited eight months to get the nest right,” I moaned.
“What if the blankets aren’t the only thing we forgot?” Maverick asked.
I pressed my hand to his leg and caressed slow circles over his skin. “I’m sure we’ve forgotten something, but that’s okay, ‘cause I’m sure there are a couple of things we have too many of, so it’ll all balance out,” I said, trying to reassure him.
He sighed, then I felt his fingers in my hair, using it for a touchstone.
“I’m just scared we won’t be ready when the babies get here,” Maverick admitted. “Your dads won’t be back to town for a few more days, and there’s no guarantee that there are soft enough blankets left in town. We still haven’t narrowed down our list of names yet, or even made our final choice of who was going to deliver the babies.”
He let out a long, shuddering sigh as he finished speaking, his fingers doing a faster dance through my hair.
“Do you think I should ask my dads to come up sooner?” I asked. “Like tomorrow, even?”
“Maybe see if they can head this way tonight,” Maverick muttered. “Just, you know, in case.”
“Yeah, um, that might be a good idea,” I admitted. “Let me text them, and then we can work on the names. If we can agreeon a top four, then it might make it easier for Briar when we send it to him.”
“No shit. Every time we present him with a new name, his face lights up with the same goofy grin right before he says he likes it.”
Giggling, we flipped through streaming services, looking for something new since we’d finished the last episode of our previous show earlier in the day.
“Comedy or drama?” Maverick asked.
“How about a cartoon comedy? I’m not in the mood for something serious, or even particularly real.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Somehow we settled on classic Peanuts, with a whole line of movies assembled for us to play through one after the other. I didn’t realize how tense I’d grown waiting to hear back from my dads until my phone beeped and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“They’re packing now and will be hitting the road in the next twenty minutes.”
“Tell them the spare room is already made up for them,” Maverick reminded me, and it was a good thing too, because I’d forgotten to tell them we had a room for them, despite Briar finishing it last week.
I received a laughing face emoji in response, along with a message from my pops telling me I’d just cost Dad five dollars because it had taken me over a week to remember to tell them. It turns out they already knew. Briar had texted and let them know the day he’d moved the last pieces of furniture in. I’d looked, admired it, praised him for remembering curtains this time, and laid down for a nap beside an already sleeping Maverick and promptly let thoughts of the room drift out of my head, like so many other things had done in the past few weeks. Eating was exhausting. Hell, I needed a nap after a trip to the bathroom for a shower. This whole carrying twins thing wasn’t for the weak.I couldn’t even remember what my feet looked like, but I knew they were swollen, along with my ankles, and ached whenever I stood for too long.
